2019Dad posted:
I don't know about software or tracking of pitchers -- that sounds like it's more up your alley, Stats -- but the question said that the hitter was going up against lots of future D1 players, so I can only assume that the person asking the question would know who those pitchers are. And with 72 ABs for one hitter during one high school season, it wouldn't be too hard to figure out how that hitter did against specific pitchers.
Well, it’s always great to poke a little fun at what people sometimes say, and that’s what I was doing with the question I asked. I don’t know of any way to pull out the ABs against a future D1 pitcher without first identifying those pitchers, and I wouldn’t know of any way to do that without a heck of a lot of digging.
I think the general point that was trying to be made was that there is a difference in performance depending on the pitching faced, and in general I think that’s true. The question is, even if those “top” pitchers can be identified and the ABs against them segregated, how much more accurate is it than looking at all the ABs against all the pitchers faced? Another question would be: “If going 10-30 against really good pitching is good, what would you call going 10-30 against weak pitching?”
The implication is, good hitters blast weak pitchers into oblivion. While that may be true in some cases, it definitely isn’t true across the board. FI, our team has truly weak pitching with an ERA of 10.48, giving up 307 runs in 146.67 innings, and an opponent’s BA of .382. It should be obvious our guys get hit hard by both strong and weak hitters, but be that as it may, they’ve also gotten 443 outs, and those outs weren’t only against weak hitters.